All The King's Men
by BatmansBabe
Summary: Elizabeth finds it very easy to get herself a crew. PostAWE WE, eventually JE, a little OCE
1. Thy drugs are quick

Disclaimer: Unfortunately for you, me, and that new Apple laptop just begging to be bought, I don't own this, and I'm not making any money off of it.

Prologue: Thy drugs are quick… 

She finds it is easy to get a crew. Somehow, her reputation has preceded her, and when she turns up (soaking wet and still quite the commanding lass) on a beach in the Caribbean, a man named Cairbre Nolan greets her with barely suppressed mirth, and informs her in a quiet voice that there is a ship, just down the dock, where the men are all discontent with their captain, and wouldn't mind a…shift in rule.

It does not take much to steal the _Murchadh._ The captain has left to enjoy his land time, and Nolan is the first mate. The bosun puts up a bit of a fight until Elizabeth unsheathes her cutlass and points it at his neck.

There is a celebration that night on the ship, and she is introduced to her new crew. They are a rowdy bunch, most of them Irishmen who had heard of the legends of Grace O'Malley for their entire lives, and who had begun to hear of her only a few weeks ago.

Just in case (for they did seem very easily convinced to mutiny) she writes up Articles, and every man on the crew signs them so quickly she thinks maybe she was a little quick to judge them. They tell her stories of the sea, and wait with bated breath for when she'll tell them hers. They sing, and dance, and give her odd looks when she refuses their rum, and Elizabeth finds herself watching Cairbre Nolan in fascination.

The first thing that comes to her mind is that he seems less Irish than the rest. Black Irish, she knows, but he seems too big, too quiet, too…something. He is tall. Perhaps a foot and a half taller than her, and with a disposition that reminds her more of a cuddly bear than a raging one. He is strong, and could probably break her in half if he felt like it, but he is gentle. So gentle around her that she wonders sometimes if he's _afraid_ he'll break her.

She can't deny that she finds him attractive.

But then, whenever she studies him, from the crows nest, or the helm, or even across the table in the Captain's cabin, she feels that twinge of regret, remorse. Suddenly sees Will, in her minds eye, only the edges are blurry, and she isn't quite sure if that smile is his, or one she's made up for him.

Cairbre doesn't have that heavy accent like her crew does. When he speaks, it is like honey, soft and flowing, but strong and commanding, and it sticks. He never raises his voice, but she's begun to realize that he doesn't have to. The quieter his voice gets, the quicker the men step to.

She wonders, sometimes, if she'll ever dare ask him to teach her that trick.

They sail from the Caribbean up the coast of the America's, where discontent has begun to spread like the Plague, and it is easy to find a few American's willing to point them in the direction of an English ship coming with supplies.

They make a large profit off the first batch of English merchandise, selling it tax free for about three fourths it's original asking price. They also make an alliance with the town of Salem.

Captain Swann-Turner is a name whispered from door to door, pew to pew, and soon all across the upper territories, she is being contacted by towns in want of provisions that still have the English seal, but not the large price.

She makes a business of it for about four months, until she is wounded in a battle with the British (funny how she doesn't include herself in that group, anymore), and Cairbre pulls up her shirt to find the no longer quite small swell of her belly.

They fight about it for five days until Elizabeth finally agrees that they will dock somewhere safe, until the babe is born. She sees, in Nolan's eyes, that he means to have her stay longer, but neither of them want to continue the fight.

So Nolan takes command of the ship, and practically locks her in her cabin for days on end, and she throws herself marvelous tantrums that only seem to make Cairbre laugh. He'll bring her food, three meals a day, and when she sees the rations she knows her men have given up bits of their own meals. He'll sit with her, watch her trace patterns across the maps strewn over her desk, and sometimes he'll tell her stories about being an honest sailor, and how little honesty was involved. This way, he'll tell her, at least we're honestly dishonest.

Sometimes he reminds her a bit too much of Jack Sparrow, but she never mentions his name, even in her own stories, and so she never knows exactly why Nolan always makes her think of Jack.

She finds that, without the crew to order around, she sleeps a lot. It is a dreamless slumber, and when she wakes she is refreshed, ready for something – anything – and it never comes.

It is a week after they pass Florida that Nolan knocks on her door, and she hears the men calling to weigh anchor.

She sees old ships outside, lights glittering everywhere, and she knows where they've come.

She thinks it should surprise her that Cairbre Nolan should have taken her here. But it doesn't.

She refuses his hand when he offers to help her up, and breathes in the tangy air, the spices, the distinct smell of rum and gunpowder, the salty sea spray that has tinted the undersides of crashed ships. Somewhere up above her she can hear men fighting, and just inside the doorway, off from the dock, she can see a flash of gold in almost black hair, and can hear the strings of an old song wafting in her ears.

Shipwreck Cove, she thinks, will be a very nice place for her to birth her baby.


	2. A very persisten illusion

Disclaimer: Let me check my resume. Have I ever worked for Disney, Ted and Terry, Jerry Bruckheimer…no. No, I have not. Don't own.

A Very Persistent Illusion 

She is splayed out across the deck, head resting in a pile of rope, and Cairbre has a hand on her stomach, hands splayed, waiting for the telltale sign of life. She can feel her heart beating a steady pulse against his palm.

"I'll give him a good, strong name, and he'll be positively the most fearsome pirate in the entire ocean."

"_You're_ the most fearsome pirate in the entire ocean."

"He'll be worse."

"How do you know it will be a he?" Nolan asks, watching her with dark eyes.

"I just know," she says, and is rewarded when the babe kicks at Nolan's hand. She raises her eyebrow at him, and he gives her a small grin, shrugging.

"Feels like a girl to me."

She sits up in a huff, swatting his hand away from her belly. "You just like to be contrary, you little –."

"You'd never have it any other way, Captain," he says, and she finds herself drawn to the color of his eyes. They've always been a mystery to her. One day they will be green, others blue, and then sometimes they will turn brown, or a deep, dark chocolate color that is almost black. Today they are green, but as she holds his gaze, she can see flecks of gold in them.

"You're lucky I don't have you marooned on some rumless spit of land without a single shot."

Cairbre chuckles at her. "You'd miss me too much."

His hand has somehow tangled itself in her hair. She takes a moment to wonder how it got there in the first place, but then she winces as he tries to pull a ring loose, and he bends forward, inches from her face as he slowly unravels the ring. His breath is warm against her ear.

When he finally gets it free, he smiles beguilingly at her, and she glances at his hand. The ring is on his ring finger, a small, simple band with a tiny gem inside, which she is sure is what caught.

"You're married," she says softly.

Nolan glances up at her, shakes his head. "T'was a long time ago."

On impulse, she reaches for his hand, pulls the fingers close, to study the ring. Mostly, it is an excuse to feel the calluses adorning his palm, to slip a few fingers into the little hollow at his wrists and feel the pulse pounding there. "What happened?"

His heartbeat is slower than she'd expected it. Stronger. "Died in childbirth."

"And the baby?"

He just shakes his head. She notices his hand has moved up her forearm, to rest at the crook of her elbow. "Oh," she says, eyes turned up to study him. His face is downcast, the lids of his eyes almost closed, and she has a strong urge to touch the lashes, to make sure they are real. She follows the dark lines of them down his cheeks, strong and slightly jutting, down to his jaw. He seems regal, almost unreal, and the urge to make sure he is flesh and bone crawls across her fingers, digging deep until she can't take it, and she reaches out, smoothes a hand across his face.

His hand drops from her arm. "Elizabeth…" he says.

Whatever had been between them a moment before breaks. One of them always breaks it, and she hates it. She hates it, but neither of them can help it. She is carrying a different man's baby, and yet another man's looks, and soft touch. She is pulled in so many different directions it is sometimes hard to think.

Cairbre stands, reaches out for her hand, and she willingly takes the help. She's not yet at the point where she needs it, but with her moment gone again, she has to grab hold of something.

"Joseph."

"Maria."

"Addison."

"Helen."

"It's a boy, Cairbre, how many times do I have to tell you?"

She's begun craving chocolate. And crumpets. And breakfast tea.

How dearly she wants breakfast tea.

"You don't know that. You can't know that." He takes a bite out of the apple he'd stolen from a merchant ship yesterday.

"I know," she tells him. She watches him as he glances around the cabin, takes in the shelves, the trunks, the bed.

"You've been moving things."

She sighs. "I can't help it. I'm nesting."

He chuckles at the exasperated look she is wearing. It annoys her more than anyone else, and he can be sure of that. She despises it. And she really, really, desperately wants tea.

"Tell me about your husband," he says, and she glances down at her bare ring finger. Sighs again. She thinks about Will Turner, and for a moment, all she can remember is a gold trinket, a coin with more to it than met the eye, and then she remembers Jack Sparrow.

She blinks, and the vision is gone, replaced by a grinning William, the blacksmiths apprentice, William the pirate, William who refused to call her Elizabeth. And then come the other memories – William who threw in his lot with pirates he hated to save her. William, the man who kissed her at the fort, with the wind in their hair and the _Black Pearl_ sailing in the wind away, away from them. William, her fiancé, the man she intended to spend the rest of her life with.

William the pirate, fighting beside her as he made her his wife. Or she made him her husband.

William dying, dead, dead, dead, and Jack reaching for his hand, throwing the heart on the deck as he curled Will's dead hand around the knife.

William her husband, the undead, the lovely, the man who'd given her his heart in every way possible.

"Will…" she starts, then falters. "He floated into my life when I was twelve. My father…he was being made governor of Port Royal, and so he set Will up with an apprenticeship, as a blacksmith. I'd always sneak out whenever my governess had had enough of me, and I'd charm Mr. Brown into letting Will out to play, and we'd go to this little cove no one knew about, and we'd play pirates."

Elizabeth smiles. "I always wanted to be a pirate." She turns to look at the faint edge of Cuba on one of her maps. "Eventually, though, my father got to Will, and he stopped playing pirates with me. Started calling me Miss Swann, like everyone else, and I hated it. Oh, how I hated that name." The smile returns. "Until I was nineteen, he called me that. Then, well, then pirates came to Port Royal." She thinks this would be a good time to mention Jack Sparrow. But she doesn't. "They kidnapped me – or, they found me and I said 'parlay' and they took me to their ship, and…it was Will who saved me. Will always did that, even when I didn't need saving."

"What happened…?"

She lets out a sigh. "We were married in the middle of a battle with the East India Company. We both…I'm sure we both thought we were going to die anyway, but…" She plays with the frayed edge of a bit of lace tied across her palm. "It was right. It was so right. But then Will, he… He'd made a promise to his father, to free him from the Dutchman, and the only way to do that was to stab the heart of Davy Jones."

"So, he stabbed the heart of Davy Jones."

This, she thinks, is where she should mention Jack Sparrow.

"Yes," she says. "He stabbed the heart. And he became Captain of the _Flying Dutchman_."

Cairbre eyes her for a moment, and she knows she's been called out on. Knows he's heard the stories. Knows she'd left out some very important things.

"I'm sorry," he says. She shrugs.

"He always did have a touch of destiny in him."

The men refuse to disembark from the ship until she does, and she can hear gold jingling in their pockets as they follow behind her. They gather around her, as if waiting for permission to leave, and she smiles at them all. "Try not to spend it all in one place, gentleman. No telling how long it will be before a ship leaves here."

They give her scandalized looks, like they can't quite believe she'd even contemplate them sailing under another Captain.

Men, she thinks, are confusing creatures. She waves them off, and they scurry like overexcited schoolchildren.

Cairbre takes a spot at her side as she makes her way toward the source of the music, and she glances up at him. "They do know they'll _have _to take up with another crew eventually?"

"They'll avoid it at all costs, I promise you."

"Look, I've taken less than fifty percent whenever we're paid, but even I know it's not enough to last them five months and longer. Not here."

"I think you underestimate how much they've learned from you. And how much they value you."

"Even my lectures on abstaining aren't enough in a town filled with rum and whores."

Cairbre only smiled. "They'd forego quite a lot to stay under your command. Don't think they don't know exactly what percentage you take."

She frowned a bit, then blinked blearily as she entered the cavernous hull of the beached ship, filled on either side with worthless, shining gems. On either side of her they sparkled brilliantly, leading the way into the inner sanctum of Shipwreck Cove. Elizabeth followed the path to it's end, and nodded to the woman standing sentry. Once she caught sight of Elizabeth's face, however, she was suddenly on her feet and at her side, a hand curling around Elizabeth's arm as she was pushed forward. She glanced back at Nolan, to find him attempting to hide a small grin.

"Cairbre, what –?"

He shook his head, following behind her at a leisurely pace. She was moving so quickly she had little time to take anything in – a few maps on the walls, trinkets placed in odd little hollows that must have been carved out after Shipwreck Cove had been created, children scurrying from room to room. She'd barely taken that in before she was stopping in the middle of another room, and the woman was letting go of her arm.

This was where the music had been coming from.

It is a medley sort of group. One man has a banjo, another is seated at an organ, one like she thought only ever played deep, sorrowful music, but is now holding a playful, upbeat note. There was a flute or something like it, and a pair of triangles, and in the middle of the tangle of music was Captain Teague, his hands dancing across the strings of his guitar.

Elizabeth watched them for a moment, until she felt Cairbre's hand at her back, and turned to look at him. "What exactly is going on, here?" she asked, and heard the guitar stop, followed rather quickly by the rest of the instruments.

Teague was the first to look up. "Ah, Nolan. You've returned."

"Yes."

"And with the Pirate King as your Captain. You've talent, I'll give you that."

Nolan bowed his head. "Sir."

Teague made a sweeping motion with his hand, and his companions began to move from the room, giving Elizabeth curious glances as they disappeared through doorways or behind curtains.

"Captain Swann," Teague says, and swings forward, his gait familiar, his smile kind.

"Captain Teague."

He nods at Nolan, and then at her protruding stomach. She dares him to say something.

"Come," he says finally. "I'll show you to your rooms."


	3. Frequently there must be beverage

Disclaimer: Unfortunately for you, me, and that new Apple laptop just begging to be bought, I don't own this, and I'm not making any money off of it.

Chapter Two: Frequently There Must Be Beverage 

Greta frets over her, taking measurements and throwing silks over he shoulder, around her waist, pausing to glance through books full of designs. She can hear Teague rifling through a display of fabrics outside the stall she is in. "This is ridiculous," she shouts out to Teague from behind the curtain. "I'll just grow out of it in a month."

She can practically _hear_ him smile. "Pirate King garners all the free clothes a person might ever need."

"I don't _want_ new clothes."

"I said _need_," he responds.

She huffs, then glances down at her stomach. He's right. There is absolutely no way she'll fit into anything she owns two weeks from now. So she lets Greta make her measurements, and picks out the fabrics she likes, and requests they make things a bit loose, around the middle, and then struggles to pull her shirt over her belly.

She throws a glare at Teague as she pushes open the stall's curtain, and she crosses her arms over her chest. "No more visits to anyone. No more. I'm tired of being lauded and forced to try things on, or take this on the house, or just taste this _damned_ stew. No more."

"I never told you this would be easy."

"You never said it would be like this, either. I thought there was a point, to this. Now I'm getting the feeling this is a charity case, and I'm not ready to become a part of it."

"There is a point. There is a job, for you. But you are a King. Their King."

"And?"

He pats her back comfortingly. "And you'll have to put up with the lauding for a while."

She pushes the door of the shop open, and stomps her foot like a petulant child. "No more. Not today."

He grins at her, and she sticks out her lip a bit, in a pout she knows resembles _someone_. "Fine. For today."

They've barely made it out of the pressing crowd before a swarm of children is upon them, screeching, yelling, reaching up for Teague. He swings one of them onto his shoulders, and grasps another's hand, and Elizabeth throws a glance his way. "Are these all…?" She starts to count them, and makes it to fifteen before she realizes just how much moving is being done, and knows she'll never get a good count.

"Mine?" He chuckles, glancing at the group. "I've a few in there somewhere. But not all."

She lets a hand fall to her stomach as one of the smaller boys tugs at the edge of her boot, and suddenly feels very glad that her son will be born here. Teague throws an arm over her shoulder. "Let's get you home, Your Majesty."

She swats at him, falling into step beside him as he laughs uproariously.

Yes. Her son will be very lucky indeed.

Teague teaches her things she already half-knows. Things her governess didn't talk about, but that she'd heard James, and her father, and a dozen other businessmen her father knew talking about. Things she'd wheedled from her father, or heard over dinner conversations she wasn't meant to hear, but did anyway.

He teaches her how to chart a course without a map. To use the stars. He teaches her, in great detail, about the Code, and about Morgan and Bartholomew, and she is surprised by how much she _doesn't_ know. Teague seems equally shocked at how much she does know.

He flirts with her. It is the kind of flirting she's come to realize leads to nothing more than fast friendship. The kind of flirting two girls might entertain when they've nothing else to do, though perhaps not any girls she grew up with. He teases her, insults her, and she realizes how much she's missed this. Missed having someone who likes to rile her up just to see how she'll respond, and gets worse and worse the more they realize she doesn't intend to back down.

"So tell me, love, how your ankles are faring?"

She shoots him a nasty look as she takes a drink of spiced hot chocolate, savoring the flavor as it glides down her throat. "About as well as your face, I imagine."

He chuckles. "How much longer is it, you said?"

She takes a moment to think about Will, and the look on his face as he moved toward the rowboat, away from her. "Two months, twelve days." He raises an eyebrow. "Give or take."

He slides a plate across the table to her, and she thinks she must be dreaming this. He has crumpets. There is a crumpet on her plate.

She reaches for the plate, then lets her hand drop to her side. She hasn't seen a crumpet in nearly a year. Perhaps longer. No. Definitely longer.

"Go on. I know you've wanted one."

She glances up at him. Has the distinct impression she never said a word about her cravings, but isn't surprised that Teague knew about them anyway. She drops two fingers to the edge of the plate and pulls it towards her.

She almost shrieks in delight when he props a jar of jam in front of her. She barely composes herself, and doesn't shriek, but by the way his eyes light amusedly as she smears the sweet smelling jelly across the crumpet, she knows she hasn't done a good job of suppressing her childlike happiness.

"You're going to get fat, eating like that."

She smiles at the jibe. "I'm already the size of an elephant."

"This way it'll be more like the Kraken."

She winces at the reference. Wonders what, exactly, he's been told about her experiences with Jack.

"So tell me, how exactly did you meet Nolan?"

Elizabeth swallows. "He found me washed up on a beach, and he convinced me to help them…mutiny against their captain."

Teague laughs loudly. "He used you to throw old Hammond off the _Murchadh_?"

For some reason, she doesn't like the way he says "used". It sounds too…pirate-like for Cairbre Nolan. "There wasn't any throwing involved. Hammond was up spending his fortune on rum and whores, leaving behind an entire crew of men who hated him to watch over his ship. Well, the bosun, Flandery, he didn't seem to like me at first. But he was persuaded by the point of my cutlass."

Teague smiles. "Well, it's not a small wonder that your men are so loyal, then. Hammond was a monster, really. Hateful bastard."

She glances up at him, and as he beams down at her, the babe in her stomach does an odd roll, kicking out.

She lets a hand rest on the swell, and Teague turns back to the globe he's been showing her, points out a few spots where there are other, smaller pirate strongholds, and a few places pirates avoid, for practical reasons. Elizabeth leans forward interestedly, taking another bite from her mostly-eaten crumpet.

"My son used to love that song," Teague says, leaning against the doorway. She has her fingers splayed across the ebony keys, and she wonders when this piano came to Shipwreck Cove. She has a funny feeling Teague had it ordered – stolen – for her. It's beautiful, a Cristifori piano, like the ones she'd seen in books about the Medici family.

She's been playing old songs on it, surprised her fingers even remember the movements. This is the first time since she's been here that anyone has brought up Jack.

"Used to sit in my lap and hold his fingers over my own, like he meant to learn the songs like that. Only time I've ever seen him so focused on any one thing." He glances up at her, and she doesn't have to guess at what he's thinking. "Well. Almost the only time."

"And did he ever learn it?"

Teague shrugs. "Stopped talking to me, really, when his mother left. _Blamed_ me, I think. Like he thought I was unfaithful, or…" He shakes his head. "I don't know. I don't know what he learned."

She reaches for his hand. "He's a good man."

Elizabeth feels his gaze on her, but does not meet it. Doesn't want him to see the tears sparkling in her eyes. "Aye. That I know."

She lets go of his hand, returns her gaze to the piano, and lets her hands glide across it, playing a song from memory, because she can't read music anymore, and she always loved this song, too.

Teague watches her for a moment longer, and then she can hear him moving away, out of her quarters (Still overly large, she thinks. She could do with a few less balconies, less windows to close every night. Teague always rolls his eyes. No one is going to steal from their King.) and she waits until she is sure he is gone before she stops playing. Her head bowed, she stares at the keys, dark and light, each polished perfectly.

She brushes away the salty tear that falls onto one of the keys, and the noise reverberates around the room.

It is most definitely too big, she thinks, as the noise echoes.

She throws the book across the room, and it makes a dull thunking noise as it hits the wall. This is unbearable, she thinks, as Cairbre laughs at her. She can't stand it.

"Laugh at me any more and I'll have you murdered in your bed."

Cairbre smiles at her, turns to sit down at the edge of the bed, grabs her bare feet. She kicks at him. "I know you hate being stuffed up in here."

"I can't move," she complains, huffing resentfully. "I can't breathe. I can't _think_." She glares offensively at her stomach. "I want it out."

"You've still got a ways to go," he tells her, and she glowers at him.

"Four weeks. Four weeks more, stuffed in this damned room, with horrible books and no air. I need air. I need…I need the wind in my hair, and the spray of the sea. God, I need…"

He stares at her for a moment before making some kind of decision, and then stands, leaning over and offering his hand. She glares at it, as well.

"What?"

"Come on."

"You heard them all. I'm supposed to stay here, locked in like a prisoner, and wait."

"They said you needed to rest, not pace about like a caged animal."

"Nolan…"

He reaches for her, and slips an arm under her. He picks her up.

"Nolan!"

"What? You said you couldn't walk."

"I can't."

"Well, you need some way to get you from here to the docks."

She smiles at him, and buries her head in his shoulder. She thinks she feels him kiss her hair, and so she clings tightly to him, trying her best not to feel a bit embarrassed when they pass people in the halls. She is a King, afterall, and if she wants someone to carry her down to the docks, it should be no one's business.

Cairbre sets her down a few minutes later, and she watches him sit heavily beside her. Elizabeth takes a deep, cleansing breath, and smells the sea. And something…ginger.

It always smells of some new spice in Shipwreck Cove. Sometimes basil, sometimes cinnamon, sometimes they are exotic ones she's sure she's never heard of. But the ginger is always her favorite. It reminds her of Christmas, of tugging at her mothers skirts while she made cookies, and she remembers her father, every year, poking round the corner and shaking his head, wondering why Beatrice Swann couldn't let the cook do that, remembers her mother smiling enchantingly at him, and remembers her father returning minutes, hours later, his wig missing, throwing an apron around his waist and swinging Elizabeth over his shoulder to help him.

Ginger has always been her favorite.

She glances at Cairbre, and finds he's been staring at her. "Stop that."

"What?"

"I look dreadful."

And she does. Her feet ache. Her ankles are swollen. She is practically bursting out of the dress Greta had made for her only a week ago. Her breasts hurt. She is quite sure her face is swelling. And she can barely move.

Cairbre grins at her, takes her hand and kisses her knuckles. "You look beautiful."

She snatches her hand from his much larger one. "You're ridiculous."

"I'm quite sincere," he responds, taking repossession of her hand.

She turns away from him, but doesn't bother to hide the smile curling on her lips.

The wind blows through her hair, and she spares a moment to think she'll spend hours trying to untangle it. If she bothers. She might just cut it all off, make things easier.

She knows, really, that she won't. It's the one thing she keeps, from her other life, the one she's only ever been half-in. She'll spend the time to make sure each and every knot is pulled loose. But for now, she settles against Cairbre, lets him stroke a pattern up her arm, and listens to the sea, feels the wind on her face and lets the aroma of ginger and the sea waft past her, reminding her of things she's quite sure she'll never forget.


	4. Inspiring the cabbages

AN: Okay, so I've been in a Roux inspired mood lately, so a lot of this is borrowed without permission from Chocolat. And I also have to mention – for the purposes of my story, the food fits – but as far as I know yakisoba didn't exist until after World War II. Sigh. Damn black market corrupting the Japanese and causing them to make gloriously good meals. I'm going to go with the theory that in Shipwreck Cove people were already experimenting with different spices from all over, and this is where yakisoba – Pan noodles – came from.  
Disclaimer: Not mine.

Chapter Three: Inspiring the Cabbages

It hurts. She has been pushed back onto the bed, and Madame Chin's midwife has her legs spread and is yelling at her. And it hurts. Oh, it hurts.

There is blazing pain, and she thinks it will never stop. It's early. Too early. She still has weeks and weeks. It shouldn't be happening like this. Cairbre is gone, out to check on some disturbance in Haiti, and she is alone. Achingly alone. No husband, no friend. Only Elizabeth and Madame Shang.

And it hurts.

"You have to push, girl!" Shang is crying at her, pushing her legs apart again and making her muscles scream in agony.

"I am pushing!" she yells back. "I'm pushing, damn it!"

They've been at it for hours. Hours. Every once in a while Teague will peek his head worriedly 'round the door, and instead of screaming at Madame Shang she'll screech at him. He leaves quickly.

She doesn't dwell on it. Because, goddamn, it hurts like hell, and she thinks this is wrong. That it should not hurt this much. That there is something wrong. Very wrong.

She hears someone knock on the door, and Shang sends the other girl, the one about Elizabeth's age, to it. And she listens as Teague asks how things are going.

_Complications,_ the girl is saying softly. _Don't know if_…

She glares murderously at Madame Shang. "What's going on?" she asks.

"You just have to push," Shang tells her. And Elizabeth hates her. With a passion.

"I've _been_ pushing, you miserable hag!"

Another contraction washes over her, and she screams, white pain blinding her. She thinks she hears something crashing at the front of the room, by the door, but it hurts, and she isn't quite sure what is up and what is down, let alone if something is crashing in the room.

She blinks her eyes open when the rush of pain subsides a little, and finds her hand clutched in one she knows well. The rings are warm against her fingers, and the strap of leather is soft and worn. The look he is giving her is a worried one.

"Lizzie," he says, brushing damp hair from her face, bending to kiss her sweaty forehead. And she's too tired to be angry with him. Too tired to yell at him, tell him to leave. Instead, she just clutches Jack's hand as another wave of pain bears over her.

When she can think again, she notices that he isn't even wincing, and reaches for his other hand. He kisses both her hands, and then smiles at her.

"Mistress Swann –."

"I'm pushing, you nasty little –." She is interrupted by another surge of white-hot agony.

The casket is small. Tiny. She thinks it is strange that they are even made that small. She shakes her head when Teague shows it to her, and tells them she wants to cremate him.

There is no funeral. She refuses to have one, only she lets Jack hold her hand as Cairbre and Gregory lower her son onto the buoy. She doesn't cry. Hasn't done.

She sees her loyal subjects have all turned up for it, anyway. To see her stillborn set out to sea in a blazing glory. They stand on balconies high above, or on the empty deck of a marooned ship out in the water, their heads lowered, hats clutched to their chests.

The King's subjects, all mourning her loss where she can't. Won't. Doesn't.

Cairbre takes the torch he is handed slowly, and she can see tears glistening in his eyes as he lowers the torch to the raft. She watches him bend to untie the rope holding her son to the dock.

He drifts away quickly, as if something is calling him. The fire takes, blazing against the night sky, and she watches the raft drift out to sea, until the spark of light is gone, too far away to see.

She turns, away from the sight of the glittering stars of night, and Jack swings an arm around her waist, murmuring something that must be words of comfort in her ears. Shipwreck Cove is quiet, and all its occupants still have their heads bowed, are still waiting. Waiting.

She feels hollow. Her stomach is mostly flat, springing back almost as if there'd never been a living soul in there, and the only thing she has to remember him by is the name she gives him.

James. James Swann. James Turner. She isn't sure which.

She thinks, ironically, that William will see his son long before he should.

But she does not cry.

She is craving…something. It rolls around in her head, refusing to give her peace, and it makes her stomach twinge with uncomfortable want. She needs…salt. And spice. She needs something with a flavor that overwhelms her, something tangy, and spicy, and sweet all at the same time. She needs…

"Noodles."

Elizabeth glances up at Jack as he slides an ornately painted bowl in her direction. He's even remembered to put the chopsticks in. She stares at it for a moment, letting the smell of the sauce waft upwards, and then shoots Jack another look. "This is another feed Elizabeth venture, isn't it?"

He grins lopsidedly at her, just like his father had two days ago when he slid some kind of tempura in front of her. Apparently, they had decided she had a hankering for Japanese. "You have to eat, love."

She looks up at him, squinting a bit. "You're different," she tells him. "You've been different."

He shrugs away from her gaze, turns his face away from her. She can't pinpoint what it is exactly, but something…in his air, in his walk…_something_ has changed since she last saw him, ten months ago.

She watches him swing another chair up beside her, and glances at him through her hair as he puts a bowl of noodles in front of himself, reaches for his chopsticks and starts to eat.

"Where did you get yakisoba, Jack Sparrow?"

He grins at her. "Love, have you not seen Shipwreck Cove? It's just busting at the seams with all manner of exotic foods. I'm telling you, one day, every city's going to be like this one, fit to bursting with every kind of food imaginable. They'll even have people who take the food to you."

"You didn't answer my question," she replies, playing with her chopsticks, pressing at the noodles.

Jack sighs. "If I tell you where I got it, you won't eat it, and that'll defeat the purpose entirely. So how's about you just take a bite and enjoy it. It's your favorite."

Elizabeth picks at the food for a moment longer, and then takes a bite, savoring in the way it burns, just a bit, as it slides across her tongue. It's everything she's been looking for, for months and months. This is _so_ much better than crumpets and tea, she thinks. She swallows, finds Jack watching her, and shakes her head.

"It's _fantastic_," she tells him, her finger's swirling the thin bamboo, grasping more without her really noticing, and she brings the bite up to her lips. "Not my favorite."

He seems to take this as a challenge, by the way his eyes light, and takes another ravenous bite of his own. He doesn't seem to notice Teague in the doorway, but Elizabeth can see him, out of the corner of her eye.

She is sure he smiles, just before he turns to leave.

It is just after sunset, her favorite time of day, when everything is an ethereal rosy hue, and as she sits with her face to the wind, and lets a leg dangle over the edge of the high cliff, she thinks about her life. About how she'd always been a bit too energetic, a little too forceful in her endeavors and personality.

About her strange obsession with all things piratical, and how, at first, she'd fallen in love with Will because…well, because _he_ was a pirate. Even at twelve, she'd known that.

There are a lot of things in her life that she knew before everyone else did.

She thinks about when Jack Sparrow first came into her life, his face (poorly sketched and quite a bit more haggard than even _she_ had ever seen him) plastered across some wanted poster for who knows what. Two days later she'd listened at her father's study door as James and a few other navy men had chatted about Sparrow's threat to Port Royal. She could still remember James' voice, riveting in its fervor. "He's not a threat to us. Nassau is small-time work – they've no order, no systems of law – they might as well have been a pirate port. _Were_, at one time not too long ago, if you remember correctly. The only reason Sparrow made it without being killed was that everyone else was too drunk to see him coming."

He'd never been fond of Jack Sparrow.

She thinks about when Will asked her to marry him. He didn't have a ring, and he'd looked desperately embarrassed at not being able to afford one – she hadn't cared. Not a stitch, because she loved him, and _God_ she wanted to be married to him. Had been waiting for weeks, because he'd always stopped her with a soft touch, just at the door, and he'd glanced down at the floor and muttered "Elizabeth," in that way that told her he was still getting used to calling her that, and then he'd never finished what he had to say. She'd left their practice sessions with disappointment seeping in her gut, boiling until that last day she'd nearly slashed at him while he wasn't looking and said "Just _ask_ me, you ponce!" Thankfully, she hadn't, and even more thankfully, when he'd stopped them to rest, he'd glanced at her and blurted something like "Wallumarrame?"

She thinks about when she knew she was pregnant. And how elated she'd been, because even without Will for ten years, at least, this way, she had three months and nine years with someone who'd remind her of him.

She thinks about when she almost kissed Cairbre, two weeks after they had to sink an English merchant ship because they'd fought back, instead of just damn capitulating. How she'd doled out money between her crew of miscreants, and handed Cairbre his complete twenty-five percent, and how she'd looked at him. She could feel something rolling in her belly, but didn't dare touch it, because she knew Cairbre would know, somehow. And she'd felt his hand on her arm, and looked up at him, and those eyes were dark and full of _something_. And she'd heard Jack's whisper in her ear, _persuade me_, and she'd wanted to kiss him. Wanted Cairbre to get rid of the image of Jack Sparrow that was forever creeping into her head. And she'd leaned forward, and his hand had been curling around her back, just under her armpit.

And then he'd been gone, out the cabin door in a rush.

She thinks about how, two weeks ago, Jack had started sleeping next to her, barely touching her as they fell asleep, but waking her in the night from some terror she'd been having, or he'd been having, and holding her close, his nose in her hair and his lips pressed against her neck.

She thinks about what it would have been like, if, nine years from now, she could have stood with her son as Will slugged out of his rowboat, and she could have introduced her husband to James Weatherby Turner.

And, four weeks late, she feels the tears prick in her eyes. Feels that aching in her chest well, and knows that damn it, she is gong to cry.

She suppresses it, taking two very deep breaths.

Then she starts to hyperventilate.

She feels it, rising in her chest, pushing, pushing it's way out, and she presses her hand to her stomach, like she's trying to stop an ache there. She hears footsteps and swings her head around, most of her body swinging with it.

"Lizzie?"

His voice is soft, but the wind carries it to her, and she feels her shoulders shake. Feels the beast within her swell, and she tries to speak, but all that comes out is a sob. She closes her mouth in surprise.

Elizabeth watches him kneel in front of her, and tries to shake the beast free – but it shoves up, causing her eyes to dot with tears and her lips to quiver.

Jack sets a hand on her knee and it is soft and warm and she lunges for him, hands fisting into the back of his shirt as she presses her face into his chest.

And she cries. Cries like she hasn't in years, mourning, mourning for something more than her lost child. It is a lifetime of loss that comes pouring out of her like a fountain. It is her mother, her father, James and Will – it is Jack, and Nolan, and friends she never had, and people she disappointed, and people who disappointed her, and she cries, and her shoulders shake, and it feels like pure _agony_. But something replaces it. As each tear is shed, something else fills her, and she thinks, through the pain, that she needs this. Needs to release the years of hurt, and needs Jack's hand at her back, rubbing circles, whispering soft words she can't quite make out into her hair.

She cries until she is drained – of tears, and energy, and everything else in between, but she doesn't pull away. Instead she keeps her arm hooked under his, and lets her fingers play with a stray curl at the nape of his neck that's never quite grown. And she breathes.

Breathes without restrictions. She hasn't breathed like this in…she's never breathed like this. There were always restrictions. They just got worse and worse until she'd been – quite literally – _unable_ to breathe. And Jack had pulled her back, brought her back to life breathing. But still constrained.

It's gone. The weight that had always been pressing against her is gone, gone who knows where, but gone, and she can smell sweat, and rum, and the sea, and_ Jack_.

Finally, she tilts her head up at him, and he smoothes a damp strand of hair from her forehead, tucks it behind her ear.

"Better?" he asks.

Elizabeth nods. Yes. Better is exactly what she is.


End file.
